CHAPTER VIII—Explanation of
the Texts which Arius used to allege for himself

THAT they may know thee, the only true God (John
xvii, 3) is not to be taken to mean that the Father alone is true God,
as though the Son were not true God, but that the one sole true Godhead belongs
to the Father, without however the Son being excluded from it. Hence John, interpreting
these words of the Lord, attributes to the true Son both these titles which here
our Lord ascribes to His Father: That we may know the true God, and be in his
true Son Jesus Christ: this is the true God and life everlasting (1
John v, 20).891891The text in the Epistle evidently points to that in
the Gospel. The question is whether it outruns the Gospel in explicitness, as St
Thomas argues, or keeps close within the textual lines of the former writing. The
Vulgate, which St Thomas follows, differs from the Greek text in three particulars.
(a) For the true God, the Greek is simply
τὸν ἀληθινόν, him who is true. (b) For
and be, the Greek is καὶ ἐσμέν, and
we are. (c) For in his true Son, the Greek is
ἐν τῷ ἀληθινῷ, ἐν τῷ ὑιῷ αὐτοῦ, in him who
is true, in his Son. The literal rendering of the Greek,
et sumus in vero, in filio ejus, would easily slip into the present Vulgate,
et sumus in vero, filio ejus. Critically, the Greek
is the true reading. It means, ‘and we are united with Him who is true, by being
united with His Son,’ or, ‘through His Son.’ But in the next clause,
Hic est verus Deus, what is the antecedent of the pronoun
this? The Fathers, in controversy with the Arians, refer the pronoun to
his Son Jesus Christ. Others take the clause for a summing of and repetition
of what has been said, much in the manner of St John. They refer the pronoun
οὗτος therefore to
τὸν ἀληθινόν and
τῷ ἀληθινῷ, him who is true. They point
to the next clause, Keep yourselves from idols, and will have it that St
John is not occupied here with the divinity of the Son, but with the divinity of
the one true God in contradiction with idols, by worshipping which the whole
world then lay in the power of the evil one. A Catholic’s faith in the
divinity of his Lord is not all staked on one pronoun. He can afford to be just,
or even generous, to an Arian.
But even though the Son had confessed that the Father alone is true God,
He should not for that be understood Himself as Son to be excluded from Godhead;
for since the Father and the Son are one God, whatever is said of the Father by
reason of His Divinity is as though it were said of the Son, and conversely. Thus
the Lord’s saying: No one knoweth the Son but the Father, nor does any one know
the Father but the Son (Matt. xi, 27),
is not to be understood as excluding the Father from knowledge of Himself, or the
Son either.

347

2. In the text, Whom in his own time he will show forth, who is blessed and
alone powerful, King of Kings and Lord of Lords (1
Tim.. vi, 15), it is not the Father that is named, but that which is
common to the Father and the Son. For that the Son also is King of Kings and Lord
of Lords, is manifestly shown in the text: He was clad in a garment sprinkled
with blood, and his name was called, the Word of God: and he hath on his garment
and on his thigh written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords (Apoc.
xix, 13, 16).

3. The sense of the text, the Father is greater than I (John
xiv, 28), is taught us by the Apostle (Phil.
ii, 6). For since ‘greater’ is relative to ‘less,’ this must be understood
of the Son according as He is made less; and He was made less in His taking the
form of a servant, yet withal being equal to God the Father in the form
of God. And no wonder if on this account the Father is said to be greater than
Him, since the Apostle says that He was even made less than the angels: That
Jesus, who was made a little less than the angels, we have seen crowned with glory
and honour for his suffering of death (Heb.
ii, 9.: cf. Ps. viii, 4-6).

4. Then the Son also himself shall be subject to him who subjected to him
all things.892892For a detailed study of this glorious passage,
1 Cor. xv, 24-25, see Notes
on St Paul pp. 121-124. The context here shows that this is to be understood
of Christ as man: for as man He died, and as man He rose again: but in His divinity,
doing all things that the Father does (John v, 19),
He too has subjected to Himself all things: for we look for a Saviour, the Lord
Jesus Christ, who will reform the body of our lowliness, made conformable to the
body of his glory, by the act of his power of subjecting all things to himself
(Phil. iii, 20).

5. By the Father being said to give to the Son (John
iii, 35: Matt. xi, 27),
nothing else is understood than the generation of the Son, whereby the Father has
given the Son His own nature And this may be gathered from the consideration of
that which is given: for the Lord says: That which my Father hath given me is
greater than all (John x, 29): where
that which is greater than all is the divine nature, wherein the Son is equal
to the Father.893893So the text is explained by SS. Hilary, Ambrose and Augustine.
But from passages in the same gospel, where the phrase That which my Father hath
given me recurs (John vi, 37, 39:
xvii, 2, 11, 12, 24:
xviii, 9), it is argued to mean the elect.
The meaning then would be: ‘The elect are stronger than all the world beside,’ —
the sentiment of 1 John v, 4: All that
is born of God overcometh the world. In this interpretation, our Lord speaks,
not as the Eternal Son, but as Man and Redeemer: in which capacity many understand
him to speak also in the other passages, John iii,
35:
Matt. xi, 27.

6. Hence it appears how the Son is said to be taught (John
v, 20: xv, 15), although He
is not ignorant. It has been shown above that, in God, understanding and being are
the same (B. I, Chap. XLV): hence the communication of the
divine nature is also a communication of intelligence. But a communication of intelligence
may be called a ’showing,’ or ’speaking,’ or ‘teaching.’ By the fact, then, of the
Son having received the divine nature of His Father at His birth, He is said to
have ‘heard’ from His Father, or the Father to have ’shown’ Him: not that the Son
was in ignorance before, and afterwards the Father taught Him: for the Apostle confesses
Christ the power of God and wisdom of God (1
Cor. i, 24); and wisdom cannot be ignorant, or power weak.

7. The text, The Son cannot do anything of himself (John
v, 19), argues no weakness in the Son; but since with God to act is no
other thing than to be, it is here said that the Son cannot act of Himself, but
has His action of the Father, as He cannot be of Himself, but only of the Father.
Were He to be ‘of Himself,’ He could not be the Son. But because the Son receives
348the same nature that the Father has, and consequently the same power, therefore
though He neither is ‘of Himself’ (a se) nor acts
of Himself, still He is ‘by Himself’ (per se) and
acts by Himself, since He at once is by His own nature, which He has received from
the Father, and acts by His own nature received from the Father.894894This is the
usual style of the Fathers and of St Paul, appropriating
ἐξ to the Father and
διά to the Son,
1 Cor. viii, 6: Rom. xi, 36.
Hence, to show that though the Son does not act ‘of Himself,’ nevertheless He acts
‘by Himself,’ the verse goes on: Whatsoever things he (the Father) doeth, these
the Son also doeth in like manner.

8. All the texts about the Father giving commandment to the Son, and the Son
obeying the Father, or praying to the Father, are to be understood of the Son as
He is subject to His Father, which is only in point of the humanity which He has
assumed (John xiv, 31:
xv, 10:
Phil. ii, 8), as the Apostle shows
(Heb. v, 7:
Gal. iv, 4).

10. His saying, To sit on my right or left hand is not mine to give you, but
to them for whom it is prepared (Matt. xx,
23), does not show that the Son has no power of distributing the seats
in heaven, or the participation of life everlasting, which He expressly says does
belong to Him to bestow: I give them life everlasting (John
x, 27); and again it is said: The Father hath given all judgement
to the Son (John v, 22): He will
set the sheep on his right hand and the goats on his left (Matt.
xxv, 33): it belongs then to the power of the Son to set any one on His
right or on His left, whether both designations mark different degrees of glory;
or the one refers to glory, the other to punishment. We must look to the context,
whereby it appears that the mother of the sons of Zebedee rested on some confidence
of kindred with the man Christ.895895The ‘kindred’ is not easy to trace: but on
John xix, 25, some take his mother’s
sister to be the mother of the sons of Zebedee of
Matt. xxvii, 56, i.e., Salome,
Mark xv, 40. If there was not kindred, there was certainly friendship,
which is enough for the argument. The Lord then by His answer did not mean
that it was not in His power to give what was asked, but that it was not in His
power to give to them for whom it was asked:896896This would emphasise the pronoun,
to give TO YOU. Unfortunately that pronoun is absent
in the Greek, which may be rendered: It is not mine to give: it is only for them
for whom it is prepared. We may perhaps accommodate St Thomas thus: ‘It is not
in my power to give on the title on which it is asked,’ — namely the title of personal
friendship and family connexion. for it did not belong to Him to give inasmuch
as He was the Son of the Virgin, but inasmuch as He was the Son of God; and therefore
it was not His to give to any for their connexion with Him according to fleshly
kindred, as He was the Son of the Virgin, but it belonged to Him as Son of God to
give to those for whom it was prepared by His Father according to eternal predestination.

11. Nor from the text: Of that day and hour no one knoweth, no, not the angels
of heaven, nor the Son, but my Father alone (Mark
xiii, 32):897897St Thomas (Chap. VI), or his editor,
quotes this as Matt. xxiv, 36, where
in the Sinaitic and Vatican manuscripts, and in the Revised Version, the clause,
nor the Son, appears. can it be understood that the Son did not know
the hour of His coming, seeing that in Him are hidden all treasures of wisdom and
knowledge (Col. ii, 3), and seeing
that He perfectly knows that which is greater still, namely, the Father (Matt.
xi, 27898898Without denial of the fulness of knowledge in the divine nature of Christ,
there is a well-known current speculation as to how far His human nature participated
in His divine knowledge, and whether any shade of ignorance was permitted to rest
upon His human soul, as part of the self-imposed kenosis mentioned in
Phil. ii, 7. This idea of kenosis may be wrong, but it is not
Arianism. There never was kenosis of the Eternal Son, as such. but
the meaning is that the Son, as a man in His place amongst men, behaved Himself
after the manner of one ignorant in not revealing that day to His disciples. For
it is a usual mode of speaking
349in Scripture for God to be said to know a thing,
if He makes it known: thus, Now I know that thou fearest the Lord (Gen.
xxii, 12), means ‘I have made it known.’ And contrariwise the Son is
said not to know that which He does not make known to us.

891The text in the Epistle evidently points to that in
the Gospel. The question is whether it outruns the Gospel in explicitness, as St
Thomas argues, or keeps close within the textual lines of the former writing. The
Vulgate, which St Thomas follows, differs from the Greek text in three particulars.
(a) For the true God, the Greek is simply
τὸν ἀληθινόν, him who is true. (b) For
and be, the Greek is καὶ ἐσμέν, and
we are. (c) For in his true Son, the Greek is
ἐν τῷ ἀληθινῷ, ἐν τῷ ὑιῷ αὐτοῦ, in him who
is true, in his Son. The literal rendering of the Greek,
et sumus in vero, in filio ejus, would easily slip into the present Vulgate,
et sumus in vero, filio ejus. Critically, the Greek
is the true reading. It means, ‘and we are united with Him who is true, by being
united with His Son,’ or, ‘through His Son.’ But in the next clause,
Hic est verus Deus, what is the antecedent of the pronoun
this? The Fathers, in controversy with the Arians, refer the pronoun to
his Son Jesus Christ. Others take the clause for a summing of and repetition
of what has been said, much in the manner of St John. They refer the pronoun
οὗτος therefore to
τὸν ἀληθινόν and
τῷ ἀληθινῷ, him who is true. They point
to the next clause, Keep yourselves from idols, and will have it that St
John is not occupied here with the divinity of the Son, but with the divinity of
the one true God in contradiction with idols, by worshipping which the whole
world then lay in the power of the evil one. A Catholic’s faith in the
divinity of his Lord is not all staked on one pronoun. He can afford to be just,
or even generous, to an Arian.

893So the text is explained by SS. Hilary, Ambrose and Augustine.
But from passages in the same gospel, where the phrase That which my Father hath
given me recurs (John vi, 37, 39:
xvii, 2, 11, 12, 24:
xviii, 9), it is argued to mean the elect.
The meaning then would be: ‘The elect are stronger than all the world beside,’ —
the sentiment of 1 John v, 4: All that
is born of God overcometh the world. In this interpretation, our Lord speaks,
not as the Eternal Son, but as Man and Redeemer: in which capacity many understand
him to speak also in the other passages, John iii,
35:
Matt. xi, 27.

895The ‘kindred’ is not easy to trace: but on
John xix, 25, some take his mother’s
sister to be the mother of the sons of Zebedee of
Matt. xxvii, 56, i.e., Salome,
Mark xv, 40. If there was not kindred, there was certainly friendship,
which is enough for the argument.

896This would emphasise the pronoun,
to give TO YOU. Unfortunately that pronoun is absent
in the Greek, which may be rendered: It is not mine to give: it is only for them
for whom it is prepared. We may perhaps accommodate St Thomas thus: ‘It is not
in my power to give on the title on which it is asked,’ — namely the title of personal
friendship and family connexion.

897St Thomas (Chap. VI), or his editor,
quotes this as Matt. xxiv, 36, where
in the Sinaitic and Vatican manuscripts, and in the Revised Version, the clause,
nor the Son, appears.

898Without denial of the fulness of knowledge in the divine nature of Christ,
there is a well-known current speculation as to how far His human nature participated
in His divine knowledge, and whether any shade of ignorance was permitted to rest
upon His human soul, as part of the self-imposed kenosis mentioned in
Phil. ii, 7. This idea of kenosis may be wrong, but it is not
Arianism. There never was kenosis of the Eternal Son, as such.